


just a touch

by beautlilies



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Firsts and Lasts, JaliceWeek21 (Twilight), Porn With Plot If You Squint, Set pre series, and then right before eclipse battle, look anna i do in fact have something to post, no seriously she deserves an award, shout out to rae for putting up with my nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:08:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29354739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautlilies/pseuds/beautlilies
Summary: Mortality for immortals is contradictory in nature.
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11
Collections: Jalice Week - February 2021





	just a touch

**M** **ORTALITY FOR IMMORTALS** is contradictory in nature. He has become so acclimated to the idea that it startles him when he finally allows himself to feel the thread that connects him to Alice. And he forgets, sometimes. (He does not. Vampires cannot  _ forget _ . But he has allowed himself to believe that there was never a period  _ before  _ Alice. It was just him and Alice and whatever they felt could be included in their bubble.) But she is suspended in her own self, lost in the complexities of the facet that immortals are mortal in the absolute end.

It’s a beautiful sort of irony that has left him inept with the convolution and nuance of emotions. He can understand them with precise clarity, but he cannot find it in him to articulate the right words. It’s too much of an invasion of privacy to him. (Alice won’t ever tell him that she still isn’t comfortable with the intimate detailings of his gift, but he already knows.) But there is an anxious ache inside of her chest, and he recognizes it so easily. A million, two million, three million instances where he’s watched Maria’s soldiers succumb to the fear at the worst possible moment. The idea of Alice falling to her knees right when she needs to dance on her little feet the most has him reeling with the force of a trillion suns.

He’s made a mistake, though. The line is open and it’s no longer just Alice he’s feeling. There’s a cacophony of instrumentals. Rosalie’s crescendo of rising irritation down the hall. Esme’s fret just below him. It’s too much too soon and he’s trying hard to not picture not  _ just  _ Alice falling to her feet, an easy kill, but his whole family.

(Jasper has never referred to them as such before now. He isn’t sure if this is the best or worst time to start considering the Cullen’s as his family. Alice will be overjoyed when she comes to the realization later when the danger passes and she can breathe easy again. Jasper will hold that memory of her kissing the scar on the side of his neck, a gentle declaration of her love for as long as he can walk this planet with her.)

It is not the first time he has failed his family in its entirety. He has murdered four mailmen, a child and a slew of societal monsters in the year he has been with them. Rosalie grows more irritated with their presence than not. Alice grows more discouraged with her ability with each explosive argument, each low blow. It is not the first time and it will not be the last time.

But it is the first time that he has failed Alice when she needed him most. 

(And he never quite forgives himself for that.)

There are not enough words in any of the languages he knows. Everything he can think of is a half-truth. Anything that is an entire truth will not do what he intends it to. He will make it worse, add to her stress, add to her fears. He has never been the type of person to settle for partialities. (But he has spent so much of his life taking the easy way out until he is nothing but the ghost of a person. What’s the worst that can happen if he tries to give her that right now?)

He is nervous. When he looks at Alice, he finds himself truly confronted with the weight of his sins. Jasper thinks there is not much he wouldn’t do to take it all back if it meant to never find himself watching his petite wife stare at his scratchy handwriting with utter horror. He’s too selfish to consider giving up Alice. Even if it’s what’s best for her. 

(He never said he was a good man. That has always been Alice.)

He is tentative to make a concrete decision. This is new territory for the two of them. He lets instinct lead him. (When has that ever led him astray?) Alice is pliable beneath his fingers, leans into him as he coaxes her silently to their room. In another life, he would be leading her, deathly ill, to their shared bed where she’d pass quietly in her sleep. It’s just one more thing he won’t allow himself to think about. (He will. In a few decades when he watches his sister-in-law struggle with pregnancy, Jasper won’t ever stop thinking about it.)

Gently, she pulls herself out from under his arm. He is quick to close the door. It’s the only thing he is sure of right now. Alice is prematurely haunted and he shoves everything that comes with that knowledge for sometime in the future, when he can be alone for more than a few minutes at a time. (Jasper hopes by thinking positively that he can manifest the best possible outcome. It also gives Alice something to focus on, not the flickers of tiny ideas that sprout in his mind.) He isn’t sure what to say, but all he can offer is a tentative stroke on her cheekbone.

She opens her mouth. Once. Twice. Three times. There’s an expression about it. (He thinks it’s a testament to how little he cares for these frilly things.) Nothing falls past her lips. A stain lingers on them, soft and plush. If he closes his eyes tight enough, he can pretend it’s from blood and not from cosmetics. But that is another battle. 

When Alice reaches for him again, he is subtly apprehensive. If she notices the slight tensing in his jaw, she doesn’t react. (It’s another thing he loves about her. She just  _ knows _ . When to give and when to receive.) He expects an empty type of pain the second that she rests her head on his chest, but there is just a desperate need to  _ run _ deep in her veins. It hurts to know that they could. It hurts to know they can’t.

“Kiss me,” she whispers. He does. There won’t ever be a time he won’t.

He simply holds her closer when she breaks away with a small sob. A slight hiccup. He anticipates her meek voice asking him to reassure her verbally. But she never does. (It’s why she is the one that can see the future. He can’t even predict what she’s going to say after so many years together.) She just sways with him. Allows the soft kisses to rain down on the crown of her head. His hands smoothing over the fabric of her shirt. Delicate silk, a trend years from now. 

(Jasper had asked her that morning why follow it  _ now _ . Alice looked aghast at the thought of following trends as they occur. It was then that he realized that she is not one for  _ following _ , she is one for  _ leading _ .

He thinks he fell in love with her a bit more then.)

But it is not enough. His voice sounds weak even to his own ears. Small, feeble. Perhaps, he never should have spoken. 

“What can I do?”

The emptiness turns to panic. He wonders if she saw something or if she is allowing her mind to run wild. When she speaks, he understands that the panic is because she is lost in the fallacies. She is not used to being shut out from the future. Her hands tighten in his shirt as she confesses that she  _ does not know _ .

He decides that the safe option is to let herself hold onto the permanence in their life. He angles her head gently, tilting her chin up, up, up. She stands on the tops of her toes without thought. He bends down, down, down. He is thankful that he cannot feel any aches from this, even more thankful that she is receptive and eager to lose herself in the taste of his venom. This will never change. The feel of him. The taste of him. All of it will be frozen in time until the sun explodes and the universe collapses in on itself.

She is the first to start pushing away at the flimsy material of his shirt. He thinks he will treat her to a shopping trip, let her pick out an entire new wardrobe for him when this is all over. She giggles against his lips and he knows that he will, that he will do it right now if she asked him to. (It was time to say goodbye to these clothes, anyways. He’s not sure why he held onto them for so long, but they meant something to him at one point in time. Jasper thinks of it as closing a chapter and starting the next.) She pulls away from him only for a handful of seconds to pull his shirt over his head, and he wonders if she’s starting to think of a way to salvage some of them. 

Jasper feels warm at the thought.

The silk is next to go. Red as rubies and bright as stars. It contrasts nicely against the hue of her skin, but he thinks it will always look better on Esme’s floors. He should not be surprised that she chose not to wear anything beneath it, but he is and he knows that his oversight amuses her. She always laughs at the blatant way he looks at her. (Jasper knows it’s because she is subconsciously aware that she is not as defined as she should be and that she had spent her solitude comparing herself to every other woman he came across.) Maybe he should find a way to verbalize just how gorgeous she is, but he’s not sure it’s necessary when she is so quick to welcome his wandering hands.

Maybe, he spoke too soon. The difference in their height is another frustration and he thinks that there is no reason for it to be so hard to kiss his wife. He has to contort himself so awkwardly in the most simple situations. He just wants to kiss her without having to think too hard. Later, Alice will remind him that he doesn’t truly mean that. (Especially when he had just spent so much time getting off on how small she is, especially in comparison to him.) But for now, he will just push her onto their bed ever so gently.

Alice laughs lightly. She watches as he shoves down his jeans and is quick to follow his lead. He knows that it’s because she is trying to prevent him from ruining her skirt, but he thinks for a moment that perhaps it would have been more animalistic had she just left it on. (Perhaps that’s what she’s trying to avoid, he reasons with himself, but it’s still hard for him to rationalize how someone so beautiful and perfect could ever show him love so physically. It’s something else he looks forward to working on once the potential battle with Maria is settled and they can pretend this blip in his history is eradicated.)

The mattress dips beneath his weight. He dips his head and she tips hers. Her skin is soft against his lips. It feels like a kiss of heaven each time he moves down the length of her neck, into her collarbones. It sounds like angels singing when his name slips past her lips. Jasper knows that there is nothing that can keep him from spending eternity kissing down the length of her sternum. Not even Maria. (It’s also the moment that he comes to the decision that he is going to slip out and handle Maria and her wrangle of minions alone. He will risk himself a million times over before he  _ ever  _ allows Alice to be in danger, his family to be in danger.)

Jasper has only a handful of circumstances to base his reasonings off of, but she is much quieter when the others are around. It is a different type of attraction, he comes to realize. She places her hands above her mouth when he hovers over the gentle swell of her breasts and tries so hard to keep her volume under control. Everything about  _ them  _ is meant for  _ them _ , and he’s suddenly so aware of how hard she tries to maintain that for him. 

(Maybe it’s here the decision really solidifies. Maybe the decision has always been made and he is only just coming to understand that.)

He presses a kiss to her pubic bone. Her breath comes out shaky, nearly broken. Jasper decides then that he is going to draw this out as long as he possibly can. Alice is only so patient, even when it is for her benefit. He places one more kiss on her dark curls, one on the protrusion of her hip bones, before he pulls himself up to her lips. She’s smiling, beautiful and broken, and Jasper promises himself that she will never wear that smile again.

She kisses him like she is saying goodbye. Maybe he kisses her like he is, too.

He can feel when she tries to fight against the realities in her mind. There is only a moment, perhaps two, before her little hands wrap themselves around him. She’s trying to change the tone, change the pace, and with each pull and each twist he almost gives in. There’s time for that later. It’s not good-bye, he tells himself.

It’s a just-in-case.

A million different fantasies run through his mind. They are wild and nothing more than fantasies, but he likes to think of them for a minute or two. He likes the way Alice smiles at him as he makes and disregards decisions and the wildest of fantasies. (He loves the thought of sharing her with someone, but he knows that it would never manifest to anything substantial. He is simply too possessive for it to progress beyond a few wild thoughts.) Alice knows what he is thinking, can read him better than Edward, and she chastises him between breathy laughs for being  _ such a man _ .

Jasper smiles against her skin when her laughter abruptly stops when he pulls her nipple between his teeth. His thoughts are smug, even when she rolls her eyes and shifts her hips to remind him that she can render him just as useless just as fast.

He is ready to continue this dance. He lives for the times she lets him explore her body over and over again, and then some. He finds no greater pleasure than when Alice is fighting against the need to push him away and pull him closer all at once. It could be the nature of his pathokinesis - and it very well could be - but Jasper thinks it’s simply because he is addicted to the way his name sounds falling from his wife’s pretty lips. But Alice whispers in his ear and there is no strength left in him to resist her.

(There is a flicker beneath her veins of something raw and painful. He knows then that something will occur when he manages to pull himself away from the safety of her arms. Jasper considers, just for a moment, abandoning his bravado and trusting in the other’s, but the thought disappears faster than it comes to him; they aren’t strong enough. He’s the only one that can do it.)

He positions her as comfortably as he can. He isn’t sure if they will ever get to the place where this extreme disproportion will make it easy for them to fit together. (He won’t ever tell Alice that it is the most erotic thing he can think of. And he won’t ever tell him that when she’s away, he thinks of every time he has had to work to fit inside of her. Alice won’t tell him she already knows.) She always holds onto him so tightly; her nails have left their own tiny crescent scars along his arms, his back. It is not any different this time, except her soul is just a bit panicked and he can sense just how much she  _ needs  _ this. 

So he kisses her. He kisses her for as long as it takes for her soul to settle. Kisses her again to make sure she is confident in the future they are going to build, because  _ damn it all to hell _ she’s waited so long to have it, he isn’t going to let the toxicity of a century long passed get in the way of it.

(This is his repentance. He knows it with the surety that he knows Alice is meant for him.)

When he moves for the first time, the Universe reminds him just what is on the line.

There is not an aspect in which they are not one. There is the slightest protrusion with each of his movements and it is erotic and sensual and he cannot look away from the way her body stretches and moves. He can feel the extent of this dance coming to a close faster than they would have liked. Her nails have torn through the sheets slightly, made indentations in the headboard that she spent so long working on with Esme. But it is more than that. It is more than how it feels like he does not know where he ends and she begins.

They are the same soul. They are cut from the same fabric. Sewn with the same string. Just as opposite as they are identical. She is his and he is hers.

There is not an element of her that he cannot decipher. She is lost to the push and pull. She has given in to the current of everything he is pushing to her. Of each snap, each erratic roll of his hips. He takes her by surprise again and again, with the way he never keeps one set pace, with the way he slips his fingers between her legs and manipulates her body as if  _ she  _ is the predictable one. (He won’t ever tell her that he adores the way that this is the only way anyone can catch her by surprise. He won’t ever confess that the knowledge that he is the only one ever able to do that is intoxicating and sparks something primal and possessive in him.)

Alice is not the first to fall. Her control - in every facet of their lives - is remarkable, a feat that he is always astonished by. He catches himself on his palms when he is taken by surprise, when his control snaps and his body abandons restraint. Alice doesn’t care, loves the way it feels when his body is pressed against her own, and she tugs him down anyways. It’s awkward and harder for him to move, but she inhales sharply and her nails dig into his back and she whispers  _ don’tstopdon’tstopdon’tstop.  _ And when he slips a hand between her legs, uses his thumb to keep an even, steady pace in small tight circles, Alice falls, too.

When it is over, he almost does not want to pull away from her. There are things to confront. Realities that need to be acknowledged. (They aren’t going to acknowledge it, not verbally. She’s going to kiss him gently on his lips right before he slips out the window and vanishes for the next two days. She will pace their room while her family argues just below her. He will come home just before midnight on the third day, reeking of smoke and venom and ash, and he will catch her the second she launches herself into his arms.) But for now, Alice turns her head and smiles at him.

“I love you.”

“I love you more.”

**-**

**B** **Y NATURE, JASPER** thinks. He chooses to think it makes him the most rational. He chooses to think the arrival Isabella Swan highlights the fallacies in this chosen lifestyle. He thinks it has shown him the most sordid side of his family. In the unconscious hierarchy.

He likes to think that is why Alice holds him a bit closer after Phoenix. That this is her way of reminding him that the opinion others hold of him is not a reflection of her opinion of him. That he is Jasper and she will always love him regardless of any other factor. (He hopes she is aware that this is the only thing he has. That he is very  _ tired _ and he contemplates leaving with Alice and living somewhere far, somewhere remote.

Alice will surprise him in about a decade. She will apologize close to a million times for how long it took, but he will find it ridiculous that she is trying to apologize for the things she cannot control. By that time, they will still be heavily monitored, tracked in every way. But they will be alone. Perhaps, they’ll go sky-diving. Or explore what is at the bottom of the ocean. It won’t matter, not really.)

He cannot pinpoint the exact moment that Alice has lost that hollow, empty feeling that accompanies every very real chance of death. He thinks it correlates to The Jump, and he still hates himself for not going with her. He notices it again during the demonstration, and again now. With her nimble fingers trailing over the scrawl of his handwriting, murmuring to herself as she tries to check again and again and again.

It should hurt him. Should spark some sort of fear within himself. It did at one point, he knows it like he knows that lavender is her favorite flower to receive and that roses are her least favorite. And it should scare him, that his love no longer is afraid to face the paradoxical nature of death for immortals. But it does not. He’s not sure if it ever will.

( _ God _ , he is so very tired. He wishes for it all to stop. Just for a minute.)

Alice is not afraid. She is simply there. 

Maybe, if he were not so tired, he would find a way to lose himself to the overprotective nature he struggles with and she pretends to be annoyed by. He could list it, and he starts to in his head, a mantra, a tune stuck in his head. Glass shatters on the first floor and he can hear the end of an argument. Emmett apologizes to Esme. Jasper is  _ so _ tired.

Maybe Alice is, too.

When he moves to stand beside her, his front flush against her back, she relaxes instantly. He knows then that she is exhausted and weary, and he thinks he is a lousy husband for letting her slip through the cracks the way she did. (In a decade or so, he will wonder again how he managed to lose track of the center of his Universe. Alice will pat his hand and imply that she is glad she had been able to keep it from him.) Jasper kisses the crown of her head lightly, and when he wraps his arms around her frame, she holds onto him tightly.

He thinks about asking her if she is okay. Her hold on his forearm tightens, ever so slightly. He decides against it.

“What can I do?” There is something feeble about his voice. He does not like how accurate a depiction of his state is.

Alice turns around. His hold on her never loosens. He does not like how emancipated she looks when the stress is too much. (Carlisle thinks it is an echo of her human trauma and her human reaction, but Jasper did not miss the uncertainty he tried to bury underneath a mountain of concern for the humans in Seattle.) 

There are deep shadows beneath her eyes. Weariness in the way they look at him, slow and lazy. She looks more human to him in these moments, and he thinks that it must be a reflection of humanity. A million neurons are hiring in her mind and he knows that she is blind. And what she can see is upsetting.

“I need you to promise me something.”

His stomach sinks. His mouth is dry. He hopes she will not ask him the impossible.

“Promise me you won’t be a hero tomorrow.”

“What?”

“I need you to remember that I can handle this. You can't guard me the entire fight.”

(He can. He has worked it all out in his mind. Alice will not be happy, but she will be unharmed and untouched and that is his priority.)

“I can’t promise that. You know I can’t.”

He waits for a flicker of fury. Of a trace of annoyance. It never comes. She looks as if she is about to cry - from this overwhelming responsibility that is slowly swallowing her whole, from exhaustion, from defeat. He does not know what to do, and it is a beautiful sort of irony that he is back in this exact same position. Every decision that he can make is  _ wrong  _ and  _ God _ , perhaps Forks should have never been an option for them.

Alice is the one to bring him in for a kiss. She smells like the morning dew just outside. He can taste the remnants of blood. Her venom is just a bit more potent now, a bit sweeter. A bit of something metallic. His hands are firm on the side of her face, holding her still as he takes his time. (There is the very real possibility that he will be nothing but ash come the end of tomorrow. He wants to take with him the memory of her in its entirety with as much clarity as possible.) Alice is receptive. She opens her mouth just a bit more, throws his arms around his neck as he walks her back into the desk. He is hesitant to move his hands to her hips, but she groans something erotic against his lips and he can’t find it in him to take this slower. 

There is time for that later. 

They need this.

He lifts her easily. He always forgets how striking she looks against the dark mahogany. Alice likes that he has to take a minute to ground himself back in the present whenever they are like this. (There is always a new fantasy. Or an old one that he wants to relive again. Alice will never take that from him. She likes how the edge of the desk presses against her lower back painfully. She likes how the wood splinters slightly from where his hands were.) She has yet to do anything but spread her legs just wide enough for him to stand between, but it is enough for something in him to snap. 

She loves it.

The pants she is wearing tear with a quick flick of his wrist. She is thankful that she could not find it in her to style herself in her usual manner. He is a fiend with his hands, with his lips. He spares nothing. He leaves her with the slightest of bite marks on her neck, her shoulder, her breasts. It feels a bit like he’s trying to distract her, to prepare her for something. 

It feels like goodbye.

“Stop thinking,” he murmurs. He looks handsome when his hands are holding her legs up and out, when his eyes are blown wide as he stares at her just like that first time. She resolves to tell him that tomorrow night.

Alice tugs at the hem of his shirt. He thinks about what it does to him when she shreds it, her nails grazing against as she does so. But she likes it most when she can watch his muscles flex and strain as he takes it off, and he can not find it in him to deny her this. And when it is off and flung to the other side of the room, Alice leaves her own tiny kisses along his body, her teeth grazing but never puncturing.

It is a push and pull of touch and taste. He likes how the swell of her breast fits in the palm of his hand. Adores the sight of her with her head thrown back when tugs just a bit harsher than she was anticipating. She likes the way his body reacts to her lips kissing down the length of him. Delights in the way her name sounds falling from his lips when she slips her hand underneath the waistband of his sweatpants, his underwear.

There are a million different ways he wants to take her. He wants to skip foreplay. He wants to spend an eternity between her thighs, wants to feel the way her hands keep him pressed against her. He wants to bend her over. He wants her on her back. The possibilities seem endless and it is the most beautiful type of drowning.

The smell of her is heavy in the air and it decides for him. He is careful when he slips his fingers between her thighs, even more so when he moves one, then two. She may be made of steel and ice, but he will be damned before he ever hurt her. She is warm and she is tight and it is a wonderful sound to his ears, made even better when his thumb applies the lightest kiss of pressure to her clit and he angles his hand just so.

He thinks about letting her fall over the edge this way. He lets her think that this is the first way he will have her lost to this tidal wave of bliss and euphoria. And just when she is about to lose herself, he removes his hand away from her. Alice whines, her chest rising and falling heavily as she tries to comprehend the manner in which he had toyed with her. 

“Not fair,” she whispers.

Jasper laughs. “Since when do you play fair?”

Alice is ready for her rebuttal, but he pushes her back down against his desk and seats himself in his chair. She is spread out like she is a feast, and she is foolish to think she is ready for the way his lips feel against her. He excels in the art of unraveling her. He is a fiend with his tongue, touching and tasting and exploring. The sounds of it all is lewd, and Alice tries hard to keep herself quiet. Jasper pulls away from her just long enough for him to murmur a  _ let me hear you, my pretty girl _ .

(Somewhere in the span of the sixty or so years together, Jasper has lost his ability to care about any of the jokes, sideways glances that may come from it. Alice’s voice is at its prettiest when she is not shy with what he does to her and he has decided somewhere along the way he cannot live with only hearing it rarely. He is just glad Alice agrees.)

He likes this game of dangling her off the edge of the cliff. He likes how pretty she looks when she squirms against him each time he pulls away for her. Loves how she sounds when she is growing increasingly more frustrated. When she pushes his head away after the third time, she is breathless and frowning. She is not one for patience, even more apparent when he has her so close yet so far from where she wants to be. 

When he kisses her again, he does not miss the way her body tenses at the taste of her still on his lips. Jasper’s hands are on her face, holding her close to him, pulling her closer. Alice holds onto his shoulders as she relaxes against him, a pretty sigh falling from her lips when he pulls away from her just enough. There are a million things he wants to do, another million kisses he wishes to plant all over her skin. Alice whines and he thinks that he should really give them what they both want.

The knowledge from the past sixty years guides them. 

The threat of reality crashing in on them ways heavily on them. The first signs of daylight trickling in through vast window panes, the wildlife stirring just beyond. A thick blanket of snow if he strains his eyes just so.

(He tries not to think about how this might be the last time they will ever be like this. He can tell by the way she keeps his eyes on her that she is trying hard to shut those same thoughts out. 

They were never one to indulge in too many fairy tales. He wishes they were. Just this once.)

When she kisses him, it is with the intensity of an infinite sea of promises. There is the very real chance only one of them -- only  _ her _ , and if he is honest with himself, it is the best way to go -- will make it out of this alive. She will never outright promise to follow him into whatever is after this, but he can taste it in the sigh of his name when he angles his hips just so. (He is selfish, he knows. He knows that he should want her to find a way to live life without him, with someone else if she chooses so. But he  _ loves  _ her with an intensity brighter than every star ever made and he can not quite find the strength to give her up.

She knows all of this. She tries to find a way to tell him that it has  _ always  _ been him. There is no way for it to never  _ not  _ be him. 

He is Jasper and she is Alice and they are meant to be. Nothing -- not even death -- can change that.)

He tries not to think about how it will feel to finally meet Death. He has spent most of his life a dutiful servant. He hopes it will mean something -- hopes it means Alice will not witness it. He cannot do that to her. He refuses. But it is there when she looks at him as if she is trying to remember every scar, remember every instance she got on her tiptoes or sat on his chest to kiss away the sins of before.

He loves her. And maybe it will be enough to get them both out of this alive. 

Alice snakes a hand between them. Even if this is the last time, he wants her to know. He needs to remind her. When she feels the first tendril of his heart, her head falls forwards and rests on his chest. It is intense and burning and she is suddenly very aware of everything they have been working towards -- their peak, their future, their peace. She is burning and she thinks that if she could cry from the intensity of it all, she would be.

His fingers nudge her own away. The juxtaposition of the gentle circles he rubs against her clit to the fervor of his hips is enough to have her jumping off the cliff and holding onto him tightly. Jasper is not far behind, and she thinks if they make it out of this battle, she will bring him to his knees and have him beneath her, willing and under her thumb. She thinks about everything she wants to do to him, to do with him, and whispers it all in the shell of his ear until the wood splinters beneath her and he is losing himself to his own sea of pleasure.

The world has come alive a bit more. She can hear Esme fidgeting. Emmett is trying to fight his nature to try and bring relief and stability to them all with his aloof personality. Rosalie is trying hard not to find it endearing. The birds are waiting for their eggs to hatch. A deer laps at the stream not too far off.

They need to clean themselves. There is time for that eventually. For now, Jasper will hold his slip of a wife close and tries to bargain with the Universe to keep her alive, to keep  _ him  _ alive. (He is not ready to die. Not yet. He is scared to discover what is beyond. He is scared to go into uncharted territory without her. He is scared she will forget him. He is petrified that she will love another the way she loves him --  _ more  _ than she loves him.)

Alice kisses him softly. “I love you.”

“I love you more.”

“Wanna bet?”


End file.
